You cannot tax a specific group of people after the fact.. It's unconstitutional.

See: Article I, Section 9, and Section 10.

An "ex post facto" law retroactively criminalizes an activity that was legal at the time the activity occurred. The payment of the AIG bonuses certainly was legal, seeing that the payments were specifically authorized by those now pretending to be in a lather over them.

My guess is that Pelosi just got half the House Republicans to fall into the "trap" of authorizing a tax increase ( from 35% to 90% ) knowing full well that it won't even get to a vote in the Senate.